My Thoughts On The Beta And Some Improvement Ideas
Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 10:21 pm
I played through two complete 1939 campaigns and thoroughly enjoyed my "flashback" to the Panzer General games. I have some thoughts and impressions to share. RULE CHANGES: I liked the change in movement/combat rules from PG. In PC, the units can attack and use their movement option later. So, for example, your artillery can first shoot at an enemy, then attack with your infantry/tank units, and then move the artillery later to a strategic spot. In PG, units had to use their attack and movement options all at once. So, in my example, the artillery could shoot the enemy, but then would have to move right then or lose option to move later. It was a subtle change, but I like your PC's rules much better. Often, the artillery needs to attack first, but move later because it's movement is blocked by the unit you're attacking. It's nice having the option to move later.
As a further RULES enhancement, I'd like to see units that use trucks/halftracks (Inf, AT, AA, arty) have an extra option. If they don't attack in a round, they can mount, then move to a location, then dismount (but can't attack). If the units use their attack before movement, then they can't dismount after moving. It would make units like AA more worth having, if you could "wheel" them into position and dismount them so they are more useful. Because of the way the rules currently are, I never buy AT or AA and instantly convert all my artillery to the self-propelled type (so they are always unmounted and giving defense support). AT and AA are just too hard to get consistently into position. The AA are pretty weak attackers to begin with so I just overload on fighters to gain air supremacy (and they can then be used on ground targets later which AA can't; once there are no enemy planes, AA is useless and can't even take over cities or airports).
Another RULE change to consider: not losing experience when upgrading. During my first campaign, I learned this dirty little secret the hard way. I was constantly upgrading and wondering why it was taking so long to rank up. The only time you don't lose experience when upgrading is when you stay in the same class. For example, upgrading from a PzIIIE to a PzIIIF is OK; going to a PzIV will result in a loss of experience. This taught me to never upgrade out of class so in my second campaign, I stayed with an all PzIII tank force until the final US battle. The Tigers/Panthers then became available and had to upgrade because they are just so much better. But, by that time, all my tanks had at least 3 stars, so the experience dilution wasn't as severe (basically losing a star). It would be nice to not lose any experience while upgrading so you can experiment with different type weapons without penalty. I tended to not have a diverse army my second go around because of that.
UI CHANGES: While in game, you can't load a saved game and have to quit to the main menu and load from there. In a turn based strategy game like this, I save the game a lot because some battles get so complex, there are many ways to proceed and I like to experiment. This leads to a lot of exiting the game and is not very convenient. Why not have a load option from the in-game menu? Another possible UI CHANGE: The gold/silver outline is very subtle and I've read some confusion some people have recognizing their core units. In PG, they had a very easy method. Core units had their strength number in black and non-core units were in white. Very easy to distinguish. Gold/silver outline, not so much. I got used to it, but I could see how it would be hard for newcomers or people with small screens.
A final note, the game crashed a lot for me. Maybe it was because I save and load so much, but about every 30 minutes, the game would do some weird crash. Sometimes the game would load and have a white map, but everything else was fine. Or, a game would load with no enemies on the map. Or, the mouse would just make a "ping" noise when clicking with no onscreen response. Every time it did crash, the mouse pointer would soon disappear and <escape> would no longer bring up the option menu, so I would have use the task manager to close the game, then restart it. Don't know if anyone else experienced these crashes, but it was quite common for me. The game was very enjoyable to me, though, so I put up with the crashes. Hopefully, the final version will be more stable for me. Other than that, there were no performance issues. Can't wait for the release and really looking forward to it. Hope my feedback was helpful.
As a further RULES enhancement, I'd like to see units that use trucks/halftracks (Inf, AT, AA, arty) have an extra option. If they don't attack in a round, they can mount, then move to a location, then dismount (but can't attack). If the units use their attack before movement, then they can't dismount after moving. It would make units like AA more worth having, if you could "wheel" them into position and dismount them so they are more useful. Because of the way the rules currently are, I never buy AT or AA and instantly convert all my artillery to the self-propelled type (so they are always unmounted and giving defense support). AT and AA are just too hard to get consistently into position. The AA are pretty weak attackers to begin with so I just overload on fighters to gain air supremacy (and they can then be used on ground targets later which AA can't; once there are no enemy planes, AA is useless and can't even take over cities or airports).
Another RULE change to consider: not losing experience when upgrading. During my first campaign, I learned this dirty little secret the hard way. I was constantly upgrading and wondering why it was taking so long to rank up. The only time you don't lose experience when upgrading is when you stay in the same class. For example, upgrading from a PzIIIE to a PzIIIF is OK; going to a PzIV will result in a loss of experience. This taught me to never upgrade out of class so in my second campaign, I stayed with an all PzIII tank force until the final US battle. The Tigers/Panthers then became available and had to upgrade because they are just so much better. But, by that time, all my tanks had at least 3 stars, so the experience dilution wasn't as severe (basically losing a star). It would be nice to not lose any experience while upgrading so you can experiment with different type weapons without penalty. I tended to not have a diverse army my second go around because of that.
UI CHANGES: While in game, you can't load a saved game and have to quit to the main menu and load from there. In a turn based strategy game like this, I save the game a lot because some battles get so complex, there are many ways to proceed and I like to experiment. This leads to a lot of exiting the game and is not very convenient. Why not have a load option from the in-game menu? Another possible UI CHANGE: The gold/silver outline is very subtle and I've read some confusion some people have recognizing their core units. In PG, they had a very easy method. Core units had their strength number in black and non-core units were in white. Very easy to distinguish. Gold/silver outline, not so much. I got used to it, but I could see how it would be hard for newcomers or people with small screens.
A final note, the game crashed a lot for me. Maybe it was because I save and load so much, but about every 30 minutes, the game would do some weird crash. Sometimes the game would load and have a white map, but everything else was fine. Or, a game would load with no enemies on the map. Or, the mouse would just make a "ping" noise when clicking with no onscreen response. Every time it did crash, the mouse pointer would soon disappear and <escape> would no longer bring up the option menu, so I would have use the task manager to close the game, then restart it. Don't know if anyone else experienced these crashes, but it was quite common for me. The game was very enjoyable to me, though, so I put up with the crashes. Hopefully, the final version will be more stable for me. Other than that, there were no performance issues. Can't wait for the release and really looking forward to it. Hope my feedback was helpful.
